Tuesday, 6 January 2009

George Georgiou again

Last month, I had the pleasure to talk with George Georgiou for a story in this week's BJP. Like Jeffrey Silverthorne, Georgiou also touches on going beyond the familiar, something that has relevance both for his Turkish work and his images from public transport in the UK and Ukraine. Georgiou photographed from trams and buses in the Ukraine to get the idea of transition across, joining a long line of great photographers to work in the public transport field - Walker Evans, TomWood, Bill Sullivan, Robert Frank, Daido Moriyama and Luc Delahaye just a few who spring to mind.

Below Georgiou talks about the importance of finding, and losing, the familiar.

“When you first arrive in a place, you are so informed by images you have already seen that it is a burden you have to lose,” says George Georgiou, the London-based photographer who has recently returned from 8 years working in Turkey, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. “The next thing you do is look for difference, which is something else you need time to get over. Once you have done that, you start to look at what is familiar and then, and only, then can you appreciate what is different - because only then can you appreciate that it is really different.”

I'll put the full text up later. In the meantime, read more on Curious George Georgiou in this week's BJP.